Established 1826 — Oldest College Newspaper West of the Alleghenies

University reveals other nominees for president

By Emily Tate, Managing Editor and Reis Thebault, Editor-in-Chief

On Friday morning, the day after the Board of Trustees announced the lone presidential finalist, Miami University revealed the names of other individuals who were nominated for the position.

The documents bearing those names came in response to a public records request from this newspaper, 13 days after the initial request was made.

The search process, conducted in secret by the Board of Trustees, a search committee and the executive search firm Isaacson, Miller, has proven to be difficult to interpret.

On Thursday afternoon, this newspaper was told the records could not be located, but at 7:55 the next morning, The Student received the documents. The university provided no explanation for the delay. Miami's Office of General Counsel did not respond to requests for comment.

The Miami Student has made numerous attempts to shed light on the search, but, throughout the academic year, the university successfully kept the search hidden from the public eye.

It's unclear whether this most recent pool of candidates is a comprehensive list of those considered for the position, but the documents reveal 77 names, including finalist Gregory P. Crawford. The names of the 23 applicants this newspaper was provided in December were not included among these documents.

Several nominees share some history with Miami, including former Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Conrado "Bobby" Gempesaw; current Dean of Students Mike Curme; current Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Phyllis Callahan; former Dean of Fine Arts Pamela Fox; former Dean of the School of Creative Arts James P. Lentini; and alumnus and former executive assistant to the president John A. Roush.

These individuals, as well as the others nominated for the position of president, did not necessarily know they were being nominated. Additionally, the records do not indicate who nominated each person. Instead, that is denoted by a category, like "faculty," "alumna/alumnus," "student" and "staff member."

Many individuals - like Crawford, the eventual finalist - were serious nominations. But others were clearly facetious suggestions, like Donald Trump and Ben Carson (both recommended by a student).

Ted Pickerill, the spokesperson for the search, did not respond directly to questions about the nominees.

The following are names of those nominated for the position of president. Numbers listed beside each name indicate how many times that person was nominated.

Enjoy what you're reading?
Signup for our newsletter

Adams-Gaston, Javaune

Bardo, John

Bayless, Laura

Bernstein, Michael

Boehm, Michael (2)

Bridgeland, John

Brokamp, Jeffrey

Bruce, Harry

Bunn, Colleen

Callahan, Phyllis

Cantor, Nancy

Carroll, Donna

Carson, Benjamin

Chen, Ye Seul

Cook, Angie

Covey, Douglass

Crawford, Daniel

Crawford, Gregory P. (2)

Cronin, Thomas

Cross, Stephen

Crouter, Ann

Curme, Michael (2)

Davenport, Zebulun R.

Dever, Carolyn

Ellis, Curtis

Elsenbaumer, Ronald

Feyten, Carolyn

Fisher Guardial, Sarah

Fox, Pamela (2)

Fuller, Mark

Gempesaw, Conrado "Bobby" (4)

Graves, Gary

Griffin, Archie

Guichard, Julia

Hale, Janet

Herbst, Jeffrey

Hoadley, Tod

Jayawardhana, Ray

Johnson, Michael (2)

Jones, Rockwell

Kimbrough, Walter

Kinkelaar, Thomas

Klotz, Ann Marie

Krislov, Marvin

Lentini, James P. (4)

Manzo, Rocco

Mason, April

Means, Geoffrey

Meyers, Mark D.

Mink, Frank

Miranda, Rick (2)

Morano, Rick

Mottet, Timothy

Naganathan, Ganapathy

Ono, Santa (3)

Palladino, Joseph

Patankar, Manoj

Pena-Mora, Feniosky

Persky, David

Rice, Condoleezza

Robel, Lauren

Rogers, Rodney

Ross, Thomas

Roush, John A. (3)

Sabanegh, Edmund

Scherrens, Maurice

Scott, Ronald

Short-Thompson, Cady (3)

Smith, James Michael (2)

Snyder, Barbara

Steinmetz, Joseph (2)

Thomas, Randi

Tressel, James

Trump, Donald

Walter, Scott

Ward, Bryan

Wubah, Daniel A.